The latest report on harsh working conductions in Apple’s supplier Pegatron also revealed that the company is working a cheaper iPhone with a plastic casing.
Here are key statements in the report mentioning the Cheap iPhone:
- Beginning in March this year, we carried out a new series of investigations on Apple suppliers. The three factories covered in this report, namely Pegatron Shanghai, Riteng (in Shanghai), and AVY (in Suzhou) are subsidiaries of Pegatron Group, a supplier to such electronics brand companies as Dell, Microsoft, and HP. In this report, these three factories will be collectively referred to as “the Pegatron factories”. Currently, Pegatron Shanghai is the second largest Apple supplier factory in China. It primarily manufactures the iPhone for Apple and is currently manufacturing the soon-to- be-released cheap iPhone.
- Its assembled products include iPhone 4, iPhone 4s, iPhone 5, and low-priced plastic iPhones. Some of Pegatron’s major equipment, such as micro-computer and detection hosts, is provided by Apple.
- During the period of our investigation, Pegatron Shanghai had begun producing the cheap iPhone. Because this new iPhone product is evident in the early stages of coming to market, some of the production lines for the cheap iPhones are only carrying out low production quotas. Though workers on these lines are not made to do as many overtime hours as workers on other Pegatron lines, workers on the cheap iPhone lines still need to do over a dozen hours of overtime per week. However, because Pegatron workers depend on overtime to make a reasonable wage, these workers’ livelihood will be affected.
And finally..
Today’s work is to paste protective film on the iPhone’s plastic back cover to prevent it from being scratched on assembly lines. This iPhone model with a plastic cover will soon be released on the market by Apple. The task is pretty easy, and I was able to work independently after a five-minute instruction from a veteran employee. It took around a minute to paste protective film on one rear cover. The new cell phone has not yet been put into mass production, so quantity is not as important. This makes our job more slow paced than in departments that have begun mass production schedules.
In my opinion this all but dispels any lingering doubt that Apple will be making a cheaper iPhone.
However, on a somber note, Apple really needs to clean this labor issue up. Apple is Pegatron No. 1 customer. Things cannot continue like this. With great power comes great responsibility! Apple needs to start acting more responsibly.
